


Of Consequences

by clockworkouroboros



Series: One Life, Many Lifetimes [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Spoilers for 4.3: Annihilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:55:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25208812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkouroboros/pseuds/clockworkouroboros
Summary: Leela should by all rights be an old woman, and yet she is not.Part 2 of a series of short, interconnected character studies exploring Leela’s life with Time Lords
Relationships: Leela & Narvin (Doctor Who), Leela & Romana II
Series: One Life, Many Lifetimes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824937
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	Of Consequences

Leela sits in her room on the Axis. It’s large, larger than both Romana’s and Narvin’s chambers. Romana’s is an almost exact replica of her former presidential chambers; the only difference being that of smell. Even now, months after having first come to the Axis, Romana’s chambers (and her own, and Narvin’s) still smell false, like nothingness and metal and a slightly burnt static in the back of her throat.

She can feel everything, hear everything, smell everything,  see everything. She has the blood of the hounds on that other Gallifrey running through her veins, filling her with youth and energy. The colors are bright, her vision sharp, sharper even than before she went blind, before her world was plunged into terrible darkness.

Now she is young again, strong again. She does not stumble when she walks, and she does not need anyone’s help but her own. She knows she is becoming old by human standards: if she had not gone off with the Doctor, she would be an elder of the Sevateem by now, old and wrinkled, not fit for anything beyond telling stories and tending the fires. She much prefers this. Relying on others is not something that comes easily to her.

It’s not something that comes easily to the others, either, she’s been realizing. Romana trusts her, she knows, but Romana has a notion that she must do everything alone. It took a civil war for her to even call Leela a friend, and far more than that for her to consider Narvin in an even slightly friendly manner.

Narvin, too, does not rely on others. Oh, Leela has her suspicions about his dependency on his agents: Time Lords like Torvald, who hate her because she only has one heart and one face, because she should grow old and die when they are still children, because she is stealing her youth from the Time Lords, because she is a  security risk. And Narvin depends on bureaucracy. It is a big word, one Romana taught her at some point, one that she still struggles to pronounce. Narvin relies on it. On the Axis, it’s like he’s a different person. Unsure of himself, lost, scared. 

Not that he’d tell anyone this. But Leela isn’t stupid, no matter how convinced Narvin is of that. She knows he’s struggling. She knows he’s lost.

She also knows he’s physically injured and barely alive at the moment, slowly being nursed back to health in the medbay of the Axis after Prydon attacked him, and he’ll need more help than ever after that. Romana will do her best, but Romana isn’t good at things like that. She didn’t know how to help Leela after Andred disappeared, or after he died, or after he turned into Torvald, or after he died for real. But Leela knows a thing or two about helping people. She likes to think that’s what she did at the Time Lord Academy, when she was a tutor. Helped the students. The brightest and best of different species and cultures, helped them learn and grow and–

And get killed. She remembers them all, every student she talked to, every question she answered. How many of those students died in the civil war? How many were they unable to save?

Before he died, Andred had told her that she was cursed as the Time Lords were. She was cursed with longevity, with being forced to live with the consequences of her actions. When he’d said it, she hadn’t understood what he meant. This youthfulness brought on just from living on Gallifrey was a blessing, she thought. She did not have to grow old and die while watching her husband remain young. She did not have to grow weak and feeble, both in her body and her mind.

Now, though, now she thinks she knows what he’s talking about. At night, her dreams are plagued with the students she tutored, the ones who died or disappeared or were sent home. She sees the new face of her husband, the face that she could have learned to love but spent most of her time despising.

She’s plagued at night, in her room on the Axis, plagued by regrets and doubts, things that she’d never stopped to consider when she was younger. When she was foolish. Naïve. Back when Andred was still alive. If she had taken the time, visited him while he was in prison, if she had forgiven him and worked to fix their relationship — would he still be alive? Would he have been forced to die, alone and afraid, longing to have her back? Would the civil war have even happened?

She has to live with the consequences of her actions. And because of those actions, she no longer has a husband, she no longer has a home, and she considers herself to be friends with the likes of  _ Narvin. _

A curse, perhaps. A curse the Time Lords have placed on her. She cannot grow old, cannot die. 

She did not steal their longevity, she muses bitterly, as she watches Narvin fight for his life on the bed in the medbay. She did not ask for her life to be stretched out thin as a butterfly’s wing. If she could, if she had the power, she would give that extra life to Narvin. He is meant to live that long. She is not.

She should not.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr @clockworkouroboros!


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